Eva Ibbotson

“No.” Henry shook a resigned head. “Cook says I’m as clever as a cartload of monkeys, but he was clever and brave. He could ride anything.” He sighed. “I can’t ride anything. I fell off Porridge, who’s only a Shetland pony; the girths slipped. He made a tree-house in the Wellingtonia; that’s about a hundred feet high—you can still see some of the planks at the top—and he built a dug-out canoe like Colonel Bush’s and launched it on the river and got as far as Appleby Meadows before it sank.”

Harriet turned back the pages to glance at the flyleaf. “July 5th 1891,” she read. If ‘the Boy’ had been nine years old then, he would be a man approaching thirty now, but she said nothing, realizing that to Henry it was necessary that this magical being should exist outside the rules of time.

“Grunthorpe knew him. That’s our butler. He didn’t like him; he said he was a changeling.”

“A changeling? Why, Henry?”

The child sighed. “Because he could talk to animals. It wasn’t natural, Grunthorpe said.” There was a pause before Henry added in a carefully expressionless voice, “I told Grunthorpe I was going to be an explorer when I grew up and join an expedition, but he said I couldn’t because explorers don’t wear spectacles.”

Needing a few moments to control her anger, Harriet fixed her gaze on the mildewed status of the faun. “I find that a most extraordinary remark, Henry,” she said presently in a detached, calm voice. “Consider, for example, the insects. For you must admit that the insects are a trouble. The mosquitoes, the blackfly and this one here”—she searched for the page in which Colonel Bush had devoted a paragraph to the ravages of the tabanid fly. “It would seem to me perfectly obvious that insects like that could get into a person’s eyes, and that would be very awkward if he was paddling a canoe. Now if I was in charge of an expedition, the man I would put in front—in the very front of any boat—would be the man with glasses.”

Henry said nothing, but after a moment—while not exactly coming to lean against her—he moved along the stone bench so that even the small space which had been between them was there no longer, and when Harriet turned to look at him she found herself staring at the riot of impending incisors and cavernous gaps which betokened Henry’s peculiarly ravishing smile.

For a while they sat together in companionable silence. Then: “Sometimes I think he’ll come back. ‘The Boy,’ I mean,” said Henry shyly. “And then everything will be all right again.”

“Isn’t it all right now?”

“No. Because Papa has deserted us and Mama gets angry and the servants keep leaving and we have to have ‘Tea Ladies’ going through the rooms.”

“Yes, I see. That isn’t very nice.”

“I don’t think it’s my fault,” said Henry, his small face pinched and anxious once again.

“How could it be your fault, Henry,” she answered passionately. “How could it be?”

So far they had felt themselves quite alone, but now the voices of the agitated ladies calling her name seemed to be getting closer and, conscious of limited time, Harriet said, “Henry, you may think this quite incredible, but only a week ago I was offered a Job to go out to the Amazon, as a dancer. To Manaus. To this very place.” She pointed to the book, open once more at the picture of “the Golden City.” “Only they won’t let me go.”

Somehow it seemed perfectly natural to talk to this diminutive child as though he was a full-fledged adult.

Henry turned toward her, a puzzled look on his face.

“But Harriet,” he said, pronouncing her name with professional clarity and a certain reproach, “you’re grown-up, aren’t you? You can do what you like?”

She looked down at his russet head, tilted up at her trustfully as he proclaimed her adult status. And suddenly she was flooded with a feeling of the most extraordinary power and elation. So strong was this feeling that she rose to her feet and in a voice entirely different from the one she had used hitherto, she said, “Yes. You are perfectly right, Henry. I am grown-up.”

The change in her momentarily deflected Henry from his purpose. She looked so pretty all at once that he wondered if it might be possible, by achieving a sudden spurt in growth, to marry her. But more urgent than his matrimonial plans was the request he was about to make, and slipping down from the bench he came up to her and lifted his small hand to pluck gently at her sleeve.

“Harriet, I think he’s there. ‘The Boy’… in the Amazon. I’m sure he is. Nannie says he was always talking about it. Will you find him and tell him to come back? Will you, Harriet? Please?”

And Harriet, now, did not say one of the things that came into her head. She did not say, “Henry, the Amazon basin is a million square miles—how can I find someone whose name I do not even know? And even if I found him, he would probably be a pompous empire-builder with a big mustache and refuse even to talk to me.”